2-year-old girl battling cancer needs extremely rare blood

Zainab Mughal has a rare blood type and needs transfusions to help save her life after being diagnosed with neuroblastoma.

In order to meet the said pre-requisites, the blood donation organisation has made a decision to expand its search across the globe with an aim to raise 7-10 donors to donate blood over the period of Zainab's treatment.

Donors must be exclusively Pakistani, Indian, or Iranian descent, which means the donor's birth parents must both be 100 percent Pakistani, Indian or Iranian and the blood type must be "O" or "A". Zainab Mughal, who has neuroblastoma and requires life-saving transfusions, is missing the "Indian B" antigen in her blood due to a genetic mutation.

It is most common in infants and children under age five, rarely occurring in older children. If Zainab gets a blood donation from someone who has the antigen, her body will reject it.

Raheel Mughal, Zainab's father said, "My daughter, she is still a long way away from being flawless".

But statistically speaking, very few people have Indian B antigen missing from their blood, which makes finding a match virtually hard if not impossible.

Mughal said his daughter's diagnosis was "the worst thing" they could have expected, until doctors discovered another problem. Of those populations, still only 4 percent of people are actually missing the antigen.

Locating people who are missing the Indian B antigen comes down to genetics.

Mughal 2 is missing a common Indian-B antigen meaning she’ll need a rare donor who is also missing that antigen

Around 800 children in the U.S. are diagnosed each year with the disease and most are diagnosed when they are younger than five.

"She's going to need to be completely supported by blood donations in order to survive the cancer treatment in order to kill this cancer", said Bright. So far, three matching donors have been located, including a donor that ARDP located in the United Kingdom, near London.

Donors must reach out to OneBlood in advance to ensure the additional compatibility testing is performed.

The donor must also be blood type "O" or "A".

Visit www.oneblood.org/zainab for more donation information.

"It's a humble request and I request it from my heart".

OneBlood is said to be working closely with other blood centers and the American Rare Donor Program (ARDP), an organization that searches the world for rare blood donors.

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